"Turn It In" Software Fights Plagiarism

In Fall of 2010 Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB) faculty voted to reinstate the plagiarism detection program Turnitin.com. It began in the late 1960s when researchers from UC Berkeley sought to put an end to the common reusing of research papers among students. According to the company's website, the researchers, along with others from the scientific community, eventually started the iParadigm company which led to the creation of the first online resource of its kind, Plagerism.com, known today as Turnitin.com.

Plagiarism is defined in Webster's Dictionary as, "Wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Marc Oehlman, manager of CSUMB's Center for Academic Technologies explained how the software works, "In a nutshell, students submit work that is then entered into the Turnitin software. Turnitin reviews the writing against online content and repositories, and formulates a report looking at instances where textual elements are found to match."

One of the main purposes of the software is to point out these concrete instances. However, it also acts as an ethical tool which allows educators to judge how harshly a student must be reprimanded or not. "Turnitin does not scream 'Plagiarism,' it points at where text matches are found and from where it found the match," said Oehlman.

Statistics shows "Cheating" has become the social norm among college students today. According to the CSUMB Judicial Affairs and Community Standards website, in the U.S, more than 70 percent plagiarize their academic work on a daily basis, and whether or not they are, many college students worry they may be plagiarizing their work due to the abundance of literature and sources available in today's modern world.

According to the California State University System's Academic Integrity Policy, when one person is caught using another person's work without proper citation, professors have the option to fail the student out of the entire course due to a single dishonest instance. "I have worried about not citing a source correctly, but I guess as long as you don't pretend it's your work, then you're fine," said Alex Casey, sophomore, Biology.

Ethics can also be taken into account when using Turnitin.com. Some think teachers have lost faith in their student's honesty. CSUMB student Christy Welk, sophomore, SBS, believes the opposite, "They are just using their resources as we use ours. I believe that people cheat, Turnitin is just a precaution. If you're not plagiarizing than there's no reason to worry," she said.

Students can use Turnitin.com as a tool to make sure they are citing their work correctly while completely avoiding plagiarism. CSUMB also provides resources such as instructions on recognizing, understanding, and avoiding plagiarism through entertaining quizzes and documents on the Center for Academic Technologies web page.

Plagiarism.com also offers educational information on how to correctly cite and quote others within one's personal work.